In many cutting an spraying and welding operations, plasma arc torches are utilized. With these torches a plasma gas jet is emitted into the ambient atmosphere at a high temperature. The jets are emitted from a nozzle and pass through a shield to the workpiece. Typically a shielding gas is used to aid in maintaining the shape and/or stability of the plasma jet. In fact, large amounts of shielding gas is used in cutting operations during the transition from piercing a workpiece to cutting the workpiece. The shielding gas is increased during the transition to keep the plasma jet stable. However, this can consume large amounts of shielding gas and at times the responsiveness and control of the gas is not optimal, which can result in a poor transition from the piercing of a workpiece to the cutting of the workpiece.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional, traditional, and proposed approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such approaches with embodiments of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.